You can try going to https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary and see if it'll
show up for you.

If not, you might need to set up an Youtube account.

But, they do have terms and conditions for its use. If you can use it, great,
but I'm not 100% sure from what I've read of the terms. I get the sense they
intend for the music to be used in your videos, but they do say 'other content
that you create', so...?

Big Butt Bear used to have a lot of danosongs.com music, but now that Wes
is using YouTube's built-in video editor he tends to just stick with the music
library that's already there. The intro/outro music for my famous generator
video is also from danosongs.com

I m going to be turning 37 soon. It really struck me when Ig said he knew
how to play 4 musical instruments. How awesome is that? I know many people
who can play at least one instrument. But I never learned any. And I was thinking,
maybe I'm not too old to start. I know, most people learn as kids. But. Maybe
I could try to learn something too.
Which instruments do you play, Ig?

I played clarinet for a few years, then switched to euphonium/baritone horn through high school. I filled in for the third trombone in our jazz band with a valve trombone after he got kicked out of school for drugs, but that was only for a quarter or so.When the marching band mustered at college that first fall, I stood with the sousaphone players, so I played tuba/sousaphone for a few years. I couldn't afford the classes to actually take band (not being a music major), so I just showed up every year for marching band. They didn't take attendance or really do much paperwork; they generally didn't figure out I wasn't actually signed up for band until I stopped showing up at the end of marching season. I did this the last few years.Around that time I started playing bass guitar when I inherited my little brother's (he'd upgraded). I did this in a lackluster fashion for afew years. I started to get into it and practice more a few years ago, added a regular electric guitar last fall. In the spring I bought some drum sticks, method books, and a practice pad.My kids won't lack for instruments if they're interesting in giving something a shot. I'm not really GOOD at any of them, but I'm fair-to-partly-cloudy on quite a few.

Heh... I found myself eating brief lunches and attending the choir classes
since I couldn't take two sets of music courses. I would have taken every
music course available when I was in high school, but couldn't for obvious
reasons (as in, I would not be permitted to, and two of the classes overlapped).

Since I had to choose between band and orchestra, I elected to take orchestra.
It was a better fit for my interests anyway. I didn't care so much about
marching, just the music.

I enjoyed the concert stuff quite a bit in high school, but I was never going
to be one of the A-list players in college and it was a pretty big time sink
to take for no credit. I really wish I'd gotten into jazz band in high school
a lot sooner, as I really enjoyed it during the half-quarter (eighth?) I got
to do it. I suspect I was probably the only person on the field who enjoyed
marching band. We had a pretty strong music program and marching was considered
sort of "beneath" us, but the football program (read: alumni) wanted a marching
band, so they got a marching band. We opted for fairly simple field work
in favor of sounding excellent. For a marching band, anyway.

I took my wife to a Gershwin-themed concert from the Seattle Symphony a few
months ago. I've had George Gershwin's Lullaby (1919? around then) stuck
in my head ever since. The conductor had arranged it, originally a string
quartet piece, for the orchestra, although there's one interlude where they
cut to just the quartet. I wish it were available. I did find a decent '70s
recording of the quartet version on archive.org which I recommend; there is
only a little popping and hissing.

When I was in high school (class of 1966, just after they invented electric
light) my school did not have a string program. So it was band or nothing.
And the rule was that if you didn't participate in Marching Band you could
not be in Concert Band (long before litigation for disability-related discrimination
- in fact I am not sure they invented overly-litiguous lawyers yet).

When I was in the 8th Grade, the Piano Teaching Nun told me to play clarinet
in high school.
So when we (me and the parents) went to the Band Orientation meeting during
the summer before my freshman year, and the band instructor looked at me and
said "you are a trombone player" I said "Sister said I am to play clarinet."

You didn't argue with The Nun back then - in fact, if you truly value your
life, you still don't argue with The Nun, but that is another story.

So I "held my ground" almost fifty years
before George Zimmerman and ended up playing clarinet and bass clarinet through
high school. Actually ended up liking it once I discovered the bass clarinet
- a nice 'clunky' foundational instrument in B-flat.

But the tragic slant to all this is that my Band Director was Dr. Donald
S. Reinhardt, who (unbeknownst to me at the time) was only the world's LEADING
pre-eminent brass instrument specialist. Played principal trombone in the
Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski (including several Philly productions
of Wagner's 'Ring' etc etc etc).

Recorder (C and F), flute, guitar, keyboards, and a bit of teh drums. And
I have a three octave vocal range.

And now for another emotionally scarring backstory from my childhood (yes,
you may feel free to frame me as Dr. Heinz Doofenschmirtz).

As is the case with every child receiving a public school education in the
People's Socialist Communist Republic of New York, I played the recorder in
third grade. It's just a standard part of the music curriculum for that year,
and I loved it.

Fourth grade came along and I was told that the instrumental music program
was available to us and I could select an instrument and play in the band
too. Naturally I said that I wanted to continue playing the recorder. And
of course I was told that the recorder was not a band instrument and I would
have to select something else.

And here's where
it all went wrong. Mr. Salingo, the instrumental music teacher at the school,
confidently told me that if I liked playing the recorder, I would like playing
the clarinet.

I. HATED. IT.

I hated playing it, I hated practicing, to the point where I would deliberately
break the reeds to prematurely end practice sessions ... at one point I started
making tape recordings of myself practicing so I could play them back the
next day behind a closed door, which worked great until my stupid bitch sister
ratted me out.

So, one must ask, why did Mr. Salingo offer me a painful clarinet experience
when he knew that a concert flute plays in the same key as a recorder, in
the same register as a recorder, with almost exactly the same fingerings as
a recorder? The only answer I can imagine is that he had it in his mind that
the flute is a "girl's instrument." So I played the clarinet
for a year and gave up on it, and missed out on what would have been some
very cool band experiences in high school.

My stupid bitch sister, when she reached fourth grade, played the flute for
a year, and gave up on it because band was just not her thing. But for some
reason, the instrument found its way into our attic instead of back to the
school or rental place or wherever it came from.

In college I picked up the recorder again and played with some very cool
people in an ensemble. It was a lot of fun. We played in on-campus events
and around the community as well. The instructor for the group was Professor
Charles Scanzello, one of an extremely small number of people I can truly
call mentors. He was scatter brained and disorganized, but he poured his
love for music and community into everything he did. He was the one who encouraged
me to pick up the F fingerings, which
enabled me to play sopranino and alto recorders.

All this time, most of my friends were band people, mainly because my best
friend was/is a guy who stuck with the band program and he was also the one
through whom I met most of my other friends. I had longed to play in the
band all that time. So one day I remembered hearing at one point that the
fingerings for a C recorder and a concert flute were almost identical, and
I remembered that my stupid bitch sister's old flute was still in the attic.
That summer I went home and taught myself how to play the flute.

The next fall I returned to campus and joined the marching band. And yes,
I was the only male flutist in the band. Imagine that: just me, and a bunch
of cute co-eds. And they were all my type. In fact, I ended up marrying
one of them. So it's an emotionally scarring backstory, but one that eventually
has a happy ending.
I do hope that Mr. Salingo is retired by now and not foisting his agenda
on another generation of children.

With a clarinet, you have to actually cover the holes (instead of relying
upon the keys to do it for you). I think it's the same with a flute, but
I'm not sure. You hold it in a similar way to a recorder. But the reed...
that's a huge difference. Having to get that reed to vibrate, and maintain
an embouchure to keep it working might have been a pain.

Playing bassoon (a double-reed instrument... very different embouchure),
I found I didn't like the wooden reeds as much as the plastic ones, which
might be considered evil to purists. But I felt I had more control with the
plastic reeds, and I never noticed any problems with my timbre for it.

Wait, with the clarinet, you don't have the half-holing business that you
have with recorders, do you? That is, the hole 'in the back' of the recorder
would sometimes require you partially cover it to hit a certain range of notes.

My dad plays flute and told me also that he was embarassed to play a "girls"
instrument, till he realized that meant he was then sitting next to girls
all the time.

I think music added so much to your life, and your sister just missed out,
and it's just too bad for her.

I'm going to try to learn some keyboard with Adina, because she has one and
would love to share it with me.

I've never even tried playing anything with a reed, but I've tried to blow
the shofar and I'm told it hurts in the same way, so I can't imagine enjoying
the sounds of music when you have to hurt to make the sounds.